Elsewhere I and others have argued that evidence one should have had can bear on the justification of one's belief, in the form of defeating one's justification. In this paper, I am interested in knowing how evidence one should have had (on the one hand) and one's higher-order evidence (on the other) interact in determinations of the justification of belief. In doing so I aim to address two types of scenario that previous discussions have left open. In one type of (...) scenario, there is a clash between a subject's higher-order evidence and the evidence she should have had: S's higher-order evidence is misleading as to the existence or likely epistemic bearing of further evidence she should have. In the other, while there is further evidence S should have had, this evidence would only have offered additional support for S's belief that p. The picture I offer derives from two “epistemic ceiling” principles linking evidence to justification: one's justification for the belief that p can be no higher than it is on one's total evidence, nor can it be higher than what it would have been had one had all of the evidence one should have had. Together, these two principles entail what I call the doctrine of Epistemic Strict Liability: insofar as one fails to have evidence one should have had, one is epistemically answerable to that evidence whatever reasons one happened to have regarding the likely epistemic bearing of that evidence. I suggest that such a position can account for the battery of intuitions elicited in the full range of cases I will be considering. (shrink)

It is widely held that for an agent to have any intellectual character virtues, they must be fundamentally motivated by a love of epistemic goods. In this paper, I challenge this ‘strong motivational requirement’ on virtue. First, I call into question three key reasons offered in its defence: that a love of epistemic goods is needed to explain the scope, the performance quality, or the value of virtue. Secondly, I highlight several costs and restrictions that we incur from its acceptance. (...) In so doing, I show that my titular question is more than just a question about the nature of virtuous motivation or the structure of intellectual virtue. Ultimately, it is a question about the very function of virtue epistemology itself. (shrink)

In this paper, I assess Duncan Pritchard’s defense of the “orthodox” view on epistemic normativity. On this view, termed “epistemic value T-monism” (EVTM), only true belief has final value. Pritchard discusses three influential objections to EVTM: the swamping problem, the goal of inquiry problem, and the trivial truths problem. I primarily focus on Pritchard’s defense of the trivial truths problem: truth cannot be the only final epistemic value because we value “trivial” truths less than “significant” truths. In response, Pritchard appeals (...) to epistemic virtue: the virtuous agent desires “substantial” truths, where “substantiality” is a matter of the non-luckiness of the true belief. Thus, what has substantial value, for Pritchard, is well-grounded true belief. Yet, I argue, this moves away from “orthodox” EVTM: this view fails to attribute final epistemic value to non-grounded, accidentally true belief. Aside from giving up EVTM altogether, I suggest this leads to either a revision or revolution. On the revision interpretation, EVTM was always imprecise: what orthodoxy always really cared about was epistemically grounded truth rather than truth simpliciter. On the revolutionary reading, what we really care about, contra orthodoxy, formation of belief in line with virtues rather than truth simpliciter. (shrink)

A basic question for virtue epistemology is whether it represents a ‘third force’ – a different source of normativity to that offered by internalism and externalism. It is argued that virtue epistemology does not offer us a distinct source of normativity. It is also argued that virtue theories offer us nothing that can unify the internalist and externalist sub-components of their preferred state of ‘virtue’. Claims that phronesis can unify a virtues-based axiology are specifically opposed.